


Between the Dead and the Damned

by startwithsparks



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Light BDSM
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwithsparks/pseuds/startwithsparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after they last saw each other, the girl who once was Arya Stark hears Sandor's name whispered among those on the Quiet Isle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Dead and the Damned

There were countless places in Westeros that honored the new gods, but Arya found many of them lacking in the worship that she sought. It became almost like a game for her, seeking out the temples in whatever city her assignments sent her to, and searching for the Stranger among their tight alcoves or towering pedestals. And when she found him, he was often hidden in the darkest corner of the temple, a constant, unseen presence, simply watching life unravel around him. But it wasn't merely worship she sought out, because she always knew she would find him there - there was no life without death, after all, no illumination without the knowledge of the innumerable mysteries that lingered just out of reach. Rather, it was the faces he wore, all slightly different, that fascinated her and kept her searching him out. Arya felt much like that herself, hovering between the living and not living, without a name to bind her to a life, half-hidden and looming among the shadows. 

She had heard of the Quiet Isle before, even the priests in Braavos knew about the penitent brothers there, but it wasn't until an assignment brought her to Maidenpool that she considered visiting the little isle at the mouth of the Trident herself. And while the decision had already been made, something unexpected caused her to hasten her plans. 

A drunk man in the inn, who had been blocking the view of her mark for over an hour, had just finished a tirade on the cost of trading in the Saltpans when he leaned forward towards his companions and, in a slightly hushed voice, started speaking about an unusual sight he had encountered while he was there. Arya's ears perked up, though she kept her gaze cast towards her tankard, and listened carefully as he described a man as big as a mountain, clad in black and brown, helping the silent brothers carry their wares back towards the Isle. He had kept his hood drawn low over his face, the drunk man said, but he had managed to catch a glimpse of the figure beneath - a horribly scarred brute, with an uneven gait, and the gray eyes and black hair of a Northman. But Arya knew otherwise.

As far as she knew, or cared, she had left the Hound for dead beneath an old tree a thousand years ago. But knowing that he could be alive stirred something in her – the need to revisit certain aspects of her past, to shut doors that the gods had left open. With the man now off on some tangent about a poor lord's wayward daughter, Arya quietly slipped off her chair and out of the inn, deciding that she would leave for the Isle that night.

She finished her work quickly, she had only been biding her time because she had nothing better to do, with a prick of poison in the man's neck as he walked home drunk a couple hours later. It was a slow-acting poison, one of Arya's favorites, which allowed a man to die in his own bed, more often than not on top of his unsuspecting wife. Drunks, she found, especially drunks who were by day men of considerable means, always ended up astride their unsuspecting spouses when they soldiered home from a night of drinking. She stayed just long enough to see the job done, gave a brief whisper to the gods in thanks, and set out to follow the river west.

The detour was of little consequence, even on foot, and it gave her time to consider what it was she might find on the Isle. She was just another traveler, she thought, wiping clean the face she'd taken in Maidenpool and trading the clothes she wore with a body she pulled out of the river the next morning. She was just a traveler looking for a place to rest and pray. Her clothes had dried by the time she arrived at the mudflats, and thankfully the tide was out. It took another hour to find a tree that hung low enough for her to reach up and snap off a branch to use as a walking stick and started carefully making her way towards the Isle. Some said it was faith that guided travelers through the mudflats, and so it was, but Arya's faith was as much in her own abilities as it was in the gods. She watched the storks and the tiny, fat sparrows where they landed, pecking at the silt, and carefully followed them, poking at the muddy ground every few feet to make sure that her path was still sure. By the time she reached the slope, the tide was starting to roll back down the river again, and Arya paused long enough to wash her muddy boots in the water before venturing further.

She wound her way up the wooden steps, still leaning on her walking stick to give some credence to her new identity. There were a handful of brothers in rough-spun dun and brown, working dutifully in the fields or repairing bits of fence, with little more noise than the sound of the Trident lapping around them and the occasional soft bleating of sheep. The silence there was eerie, though Arya didn't feel uneasy in it. She understood the comfort of silence all too well, and as she made her way up the slope, she did her best to keep her footsteps light. No one seemed to pay her any mind, but she still tugged her hood up to shadow her face as she rounded the brow of the hill and started towards the little wooden sept. She looked for him - the mountain of a man - but he wasn't the sole reason she had come and if she only saw one familiar face that day, the trip would have still been justified. 

With the same reverent silence, Arya approached the sept, the doors standing open to the midday sun, and ducked into the cool interior. She edged the walls, careful not to disturb any of the brothers in prayer, until she stood in front of him - the Stranger's cloaked face carved out of the darkest wood that Arya could imagine on one side, with slips of bone-white weirwood on the other. She smiled - a faint dark tug at the corners of her lips that shone most brightly not across her mouth but in her eyes, and took a step back to look at him properly. There was only one knobby yellow candle, melted down to its base, sitting on a low shelf beneath the Stranger's hooded face, and Arya had nothing to light it with. But she only had to linger there a moment before a brother clad in the same faded robes with a strip of wool wrapped around his face cautiously approached her with a taper in one hand and a thick, stout candle in the other. He looked at Arya for a long moment, then nodded, and handed her the candle and taper before shuffling away again.

Arya didn't question the look, it was one that she had encountered before and she had long since stopped trying to analyze the meaning behind it, she just peeled the spent candle off its wooden base, replaced it, and lit it quickly before the taper burned down to her fingers. With the flickering light casting shadows on the Stranger's half-dead face, she lowered her hood and smoothed down her cloak before kneeling on the ground. It wasn't only the Stranger she prayed to here, but all the gods that stood watch around the black pool in Braavos; the old gods and new, the forgotten and the unspoken. There were still names on her lips at night, offerings she would gladly give, and it was those names she turned over and over in her mind as her lips stayed pressed into a thin line.

She knelt there, her head bowed and her eyes shut, for several long minutes before the sound of footsteps coming up behind her made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. Arya slowly slipped her left hand up from her knee and under her cloak where she wrapped her hand around the hilt of her sword. The scent of sweat and wet linen wafted past her, mixing with the sweet smell of beeswax. She could almost feel his shadow looming over her until the man knelt and slowly reached out to place a small stub of a candle next to hers, tipping it briefly to light the wick from the already flickering flame at the base of the Stranger's statue. 

Straightening her shoulders, Arya drew up next to him, and even then she didn't manage to come even with his shoulders. Her heart thumped unevenly in her chest and she slowly glanced up to see thick black hair streaked with gray covering a scarred face. As she turned her head, he did the same, and for a moment the look on his face showed no sign of recognition. But then he lowered his head slightly and the question she hadn't even had time to ask was answered. Arya glanced towards the door, then back at him, and he gave a nod.

She could only assume that a brother had informed him, somehow, that someone had lit a candle before the Stranger. It was certain to draw attention, for another faithful adherent to show reverence to a god so infrequently visited and that was, in part, her intention. She knew she wasn't the only wayward child, cast-off from the world, who sought comfort in the only one who truly understood. However it happened, she felt his presence a pace behind her as she stepped out of the sept and made her way towards the grassy hill that the refuge stood on. And while she still wanted more time with her god, she hadn't expected that he would be so quick in finding her.

They had no sooner crossed the threshold of the gate than she heard his voice, no less gruff now as it had been the day she left him, "Where'd you get that sword?"

Arya stopped mid-stride as a slow smirk crawled across her lips. "I took it off a dead girl," she said.

She turned towards him, slowly, watching as his face drew into a hardened look. She could tell that he didn't know whether to believe her or not, that he didn't quite recognize her. It had been a long time since she left him there under that tree, and maybe the death of the Hound had taken some of his memories along with it. But he had changed as well; where it had once been black, his hair was now streaked with in places with gray and a slight milk-white spot, just edging towards the center of his pupil, had started to develop in his right eye. The scars on his face were knit together and diminished now as well, far less grotesque than she remembered. She wondered what brother it was who had done the work that lessened the horrific damage the Mountain had caused him. 

But sure enough, his face eventually pulled into a thin frown and he tilted his head at her. "Stark," he muttered.

It had been a long time since she had answered to that name, the one a father had given a girl who looked too much like his own dead sister to share her name instead. But for him, she would gladly answer to it again. Her smirk widened and she gave him a nod, "Clegane."

"Why are you here?" he asked.

Honestly, she still didn't know why she was there, except for the urge to satiate some strange curiosity. She had heard rumors of him before, rumors that had always turned out to be false. But there was something about seeing him alive again that brought her back to a time she had almost forgotten. He was the last connection to her past that she would allow herself; him and the sword at her side.

"I couldn't tell you," she shrugged. "I heard that someone in the Saltpans had spotted you, I just wanted to see for myself if it was true. I have to say, though... of all the places I thought I might find you again, this is one I never considered."

"That was the point," Sandor said. 

Silence lapsed between them for a few moments before Sandor sighed and turned to walk along the brown and brackish shore of the mudflats. He knew she would follow him, as she had known he would follow her. Neither of them spoke until they reached a sunny spot on the west side of the hill, where the setting sun had warmed and dried the land. He stopped there and lowered his massive form down onto the ground, resting his elbows on his knees.

"So you've finally come to finish the job," he said, his voice giving away little, even to her. He seemed, if nothing else, almost resigned to his time ending here. 

Arya canted her head and watched him, quietly, for a moment. "I seem to remember the last time we saw each other, you were begging me to kill you. Have you changed your mind?" 

"No," he shook his head, his shoulders rising up in a brief, tense shrug. "It doesn't matter to me when I go, not anymore. All I ask is that you make it quick."

She sighed and dropped down on the ground next to him, crossing her legs and letting her hands fall to her knees. "It wasn't Sandor Clegane's name on my list," she said, her voice softer than it was before, "it was the Hound's name, and the Hound died before I ever left Westeros. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it under that tree."

He made a noise, somewhere between a snort of derision and amusement, a noise she had heard from him more than once before. "Where did that act of charity come from?"

"You helped me get Needle back," she shrugged. It was more than that, of course, but the moment she had felt that familiar blade in her hand again, something inside her softened. That night, too... as she watched him suffer through the pain of his wounds while she tended to him, her hatred for him softened more yet. By the time they had come to the end, the shade of that tree, her hated of him had all but left her entirely. 

For a while, he just stared at her, as though trying to decide if she was being sincere or not. When he found what he was looking for, he gave her a curt nod and turned his attention back towards the river. She watched as some of the tension in his limbs seemed to ease, his shoulders relaxing and the heavy lines in his face thinning out. The two sat there in silence for a time, watching the sun glint off the mudflats and crane pick through the mud for insects and small fish. It was a somewhat uneasy silence, however, and as it stretched on, the strain of things left unspoken continued to mount as well. Before Arya could find the words to break the silence, Sandor reached out for her. 

She started to pull away out of instinct, recoiling the way she might have years ago, her hand flitting towards the hilt of her sword. He stopped mid-movement, his hand hovering in the space between them, and waited until her form relaxed again before his rough hand fell against her cheek and he coaxed her gently towards him. Arya let herself be drawn in, her hand slipping from her sword hilt to rest on the ground next to her. Once the gap between them had closed, she let herself relax against his side and sighed softly, watching the the dim red rays of sun glint off the water again.

It was strange, sitting there like that with him; not because of the closeness, but because she felt so comfortable in it. It surprised her, but the bulk of his form and the shadow he cast over her made her feel safe. She hadn't felt that way in a long time, since the last time he hovered over her like a wall between her and the rest of the world. For a moment, she even let her eyes fall closed, losing herself in the steady rhythm of his breathing. It was all too easy to linger there like that, feeling more and more like she would be happy if she never got up again. But this was not her world; her world existed somewhere across the Narrow Sea, not on an idyllic little hill in the middle of Westeros with a man who everyone thought was dead. 

"Come back with me," she said. 

She hadn't expected those words to spill from her, but they had already escaped her lips by the time she thought to stop them, and once the offer had been made she couldn't think of a reason to take it back. There was always the chance that they would turn him away at the door, but there was also the chance that they would see him for what he truly was, the way they had once done for her. The Hound may have been dead, the killer in him may have been at rest, but Arya knew better than anyone that the dead could come back. And even if they denied him entrance, there were more opportunities for him to thrive in Braavos, where no one knew who he was or who he had been, than there were here.

"What's there for me that I don't have here?" he asked.

"A second chance."

He stared at her, uncertainty lingering in his mismatched gaze, and in those few short moments, Arya decided that she wasn't going to let him say no. She pushed herself to her knees, nearly tall enough to look him in the eye, and reached out to rest her hands on his shoulders. He made no attempt to move as she leaned in and pressed her lips against his, firm and determined. She didn't care if he didn't reciprocate, she was going to take this from him until he realized that he wanted it as well, and had wanted it long before it was a decent thing to desire. She'd never had the luxury of being naive, and circumstances made her all too aware of when a man looked at her a certain way, no matter how he tried to hide it.

But he kissed her back. His hand settled on her waist, large enough to circle it nearly by half, and clenched her cloak in his fist. He hadn't lost any of his mass over the years; if anything he was healthier, sturdier than he had been then, without the smell of beer and blood staining his clothes and assaulting her senses. She pressed herself against his chest and shifted to pin her knees on either side of his broad hips, pressing even more fervently into the kiss. He pushed back into her, each of them trying to win dominance over the other. But she was a wolf and he was just a dog; she would win every time.

Her hands dragged up from his chest and settled loosely around his neck, that small movement enough to trigger something in him that made him suddenly stop trying to win her submission. She dragged herself away from his mouth, lips brushing tentatively over the marred skin at the edge of his jaw, "You know you're not fucking me," she said.

"I'd break you in half," he grumbled, his teeth sliding across the delicate skin at the edge of her neck.

She pulled back from him, her back arching in his grasp and shot a skeptical glance at him, "Doubtful," she said. "I meant you're not fucking me _here_ , in the shadow of the refuge."

"How noble."

She shoved at him and he dropped back onto his elbows on the grass behind him, snorting.

"I knew there was something of the man I knew still left in you," she said, still eyeing him.

Arya loosened her cloak from around her shoulders and slid her sword from her belt, leaving it all in a heap next to her. It was as vulnerable she was willing to make herself, with her back towards the Trident and her attention focused on him. She knew he was no threat to her, not that she had ever considered him one, if only because his gaze hadn't left her since she dragged her body on top of his. She pushed herself up, hands braced against his broad chest.

"Tell me..." she said, fingers curling in the thin, brown fabric of his shirt.

She caught the momentary glint of uncertainty in his eyes, weighing the safety of staying here against the chance for the life she dangled in front of him. The decision came swift, and he nodded, "I'll go."

"I knew you would," she replied, sliding her hands around his neck again as she pinned him to the ground, eagerly seizing another harsh kiss.


End file.
